Bem, porque foi bastante simples - fiz uma experiência no meu próprio sistema.
Terminal 1
$ uname -a
Linux my-pc 3.15.1-1-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Tue Jun 17 09:32:20 CEST 2014 x86_64 GNU/Linux
$ ifconfig
eth0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
inet 192.168.1.2 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.1.255
inet6 fe80::21f:bcff:fe09:7b0a prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x20<link>
ether 66:60:13:37:06:66 txqueuelen 1000 (Ethernet)
RX packets 451273 bytes 458871230 (437.6 MiB)
RX errors 0 dropped 12 overruns 0 frame 0
TX packets 305732 bytes 32068185 (30.5 MiB)
TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0
lo: flags=73<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING> mtu 65536
inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 255.0.0.0
inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128 scopeid 0x10<host>
loop txqueuelen 0 (Local Loopback)
RX packets 13166 bytes 667544 (651.8 KiB)
RX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 frame 0
TX packets 13166 bytes 667544 (651.8 KiB)
TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0
$ ping 192.168.1.2
PING 192.168.1.2 (192.168.1.2) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 192.168.1.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.048 ms
^C
--- 192.168.1.2 ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 0ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.048/0.048/0.048/0.000 ms
Terminal 2
$ sudo tcpdump -i lo 'icmp and src 192.168.1.2'
tcpdump: verbose output suppressed, use -v or -vv for full protocol decode
listening on lo, link-type EN10MB (Ethernet), capture size 65535 bytes
21:27:17.944958 IP my-pc.home > my-pc.home: ICMP echo request, id 32419, seq 1, length 64
21:27:17.944975 IP my-pc.home > my-pc.home: ICMP echo reply, id 32419, seq 1, length 64
Terminal 3
$ sudo tcpdump -i eth0 'icmp and src 192.168.1.2'
tcpdump: verbose output suppressed, use -v or -vv for full protocol decode
listening on eth0, link-type EN10MB (Ethernet), capture size 65535 bytes
Os resultados .. Pelo menos no meu computador, o ping vai para lo
nunca deixando meu sistema. Espero que este experimento simples, que você pode experimentar, ajude você mesmo.
Outra maneira é usar o traceroute.
$ sudo traceroute 192.168.1.2
traceroute to 192.168.1.2 (192.168.1.2), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 my-pc.home (192.168.1.2) 0.048 ms 0.014 ms 0.022 ms